HIV Hotline and Tree Nursery

I spent the last few days in Nairobi where I got some R&R, ate some amazing food and saw a few Peace Corps friends, but now it’s back to work at site. I have two new projects in the works for this month which should keep me very busy.

First is my new HIV Hotline which will provide HIV/AIDS support, STD/STI information and testing clinic referrals to people in 3 different languages (Kiwahili, Kalenjin and English). A man name Alfred who I worked on the International Women’s Day event will be helping me. He will carry around the phone from about 10am-3pm everyday and people can call and ask him questions about health. We’ve had a general meeting to make sure we are on the same page with health issues, especially HIV, so no false information will be spread. We made a couple of different posters for advertising and hopefully within the next few months the hotline will be ringing off the hook! Although it will be confidential, we will ask callers their sex and age to keep track of which type of people we are helping the most and who we should target.

My other project, is a tree nursery that I will be putting together with a local secondary school. For Earth Day, April 22nd, we will get together to learn how to plant the trees and how to keep them healthy. All I’m providing is the lessons and the trees and then it is up to the kids to keep them up. The goal is to hopefully sell whatever trees are not needed to start a scholarship for kids that cannot afford school.

I’ve been really motivated since the Women’s Day and am using the popularity I gained after the event to propel my new projects and ideas. Everyone keeps telling me how grateful they are for everything I’ve been doing and it’s truly humbling.

Next week I'll be visiting my old site near Busia and seeing all my old friends! I'm so excited to catch up with them and see my old students especially. After I will be traveling to Uganda with 20 other volunteers to go river rafting on the Nile River!!!!

Basking in the Little Things

I'm proud to announce that my International Women's Day was such a successful event!!! In the end, the community really came together and made the event their own. Over 200 women that attended took home valuable information about HIV, Water Sanitation, Financial Banking, Starting a Business, the Importance of Education, Family Planning and how to make reusable sanitary pads! We gave out over 500 condoms, 100 reusable sanitary pads, 50 fertility awareness necklaces, 75 business plan worksheets and tested 50 people for HIV! We also had an impromptu fundraiser for the maternity ward I'm trying to build and we raised over 10,000ksh (about $100 US) which is a great start!

I'm really proud of my community and feel empowered to keep up all the hard work I've been putting in. I'm really trying to find glory in the small things I accomplish here to keep me going. The bad days here are very very low, but the good days make it all worth it.

After my event, my fellow PCVs and I went to Kisii to celebrate and I got to eat a bacon cheese burger!

Celebrate International Women's Day

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes." They will say, "Women don't have what it takes." ~Clare Boothe Luce

International Women's Day is this Thursday, March 8th! I'm writing to encourage all of you to go out, find an event, and celebrate the milestones women have overcame over the years. Not only in America, but in Africa, women have fought to gain basic human rights. The suppression of women has only made us a stronger gender. Here in Africa, women raise the children, tend to the farm and usually hold small jobs on the side all to support their family! They are the bedrock of Africa. That is why we call this continent Mother Africa.

We are lucky as women in America to have all we have. Women in Africa are still confined to their stereotypical gender roles. It is unheard of for women to even wear trousers in the village. Women must take on the entire burden of the family. Even if they are married, many times men run off and find second wives or girlfriends and their first wife cannot say or do anything. It's rare to find a woman here who is financially independent.

That is why I am working hard to teach women how to make healthy choices, learn business skills and create options for themselves through gaining higher education. I ask all of you back home to use this day to reflect on how far women have come, and how much further they have yet to go. Appreciate your mothers, your sisters, your wives.

I'd love to hear what you're doing so comment below!

The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. ~Roseanne Barr

SAVING THE WORLD!